60: (June 2026)
I wasn’t sure what I was seeing out my front window, so close to the house. We had not yet mowed the ‘lawn’ since the winter snow melted, first because we observe ‘no mow May’ in order to benefit the local pollinators, and then because lavender fleabane and wild daisies had bloomed profusely, and I didn’t have the heart to mow them even when June rolled around. It was all a foot or more high, but something in one spot seemed slightly out of the ordinary. Upon closer inspection out the window, it was a fawn, whose spots blended in quite well with the surrounding blossoms.
The fawn must have been only a day or two old, left by its mother to nap most of the day until she returned at dusk, per a usual maternal pattern of behavior in deer. I was thrilled to see this small, vulnerable creature resting so peacefully just yards away from our home. She (or he) stayed on the same spot for most of the day. Then, one time when we looked out the window to check if the fawn was still there, we were delighted to see her walking gingerly among one of my flower beds. She seemed to somehow know that a storm was coming, and she was looking for a more sheltered place to bed down in.
I took a short video through the window of these magical moments and posted it on TikTok which you can find here.
The fawn spent two days on the lawn and then was gone. I keep searching for her on our property and along the road, hoping to get another glimpse of this beautiful animal, this wild miracle of nature that has blessed my garden. I’ve seen her mother, my family members have spotted the fawn and her mother together just down the road, and I’ve seen her little hoof prints in the soil among my flowers. I love knowing that she is out there in all her splendor, yet intimately connected to me through the nature surrounding our home. Utterly divine.
40: (June 2006)
I was in the home of an old friend whom I had not seen for about ten years. Her children had grown, and she and her husband had a few gray hairs, but the biggest change in the household was that she had acquired a huge collection of quilts. There were quilts on chairs, quilts on couches, quilts on beds, and many, many quilts on the walls. It was like walking into a folk art museum! My friend told me that every quilt in her home was done by her own hand, one stitch at a time.
“How on earth have you managed to do all this beautiful work?” I asked in astonishment. “Wednesdays,” she said, matter of factly. “I get together with my mother every Wednesday night, and we quilt.”
Wednesdays. Ten years ago, around the time when we lost contact with each other, this woman had just begun to learn to quilt. She had gone from novice to artist on a string of Wednesday nights. I thought of all the effort required to make even one of the fabric masterpieces: deciding on design and cloth, precisely cutting hundreds of little squares and rectangles, carefully sewing complicated geometric patterns, intricately stitching on top of it all, and then putting on the finishing touches. Wednesdays.
Stitch by stitch. Tiny stitches, patiently made, minute after minute, hour after hour. Wednesdays can pile up, one after the other, year after year, until you suddenly notice that you have accomplished a great deal! What things do I put off because I think I do not have the time? The book I want to write? The songs I want to create? The life I want to lead?
Patience. Persistence. Focus. Time does its magic, and then one day it has become the future, and something significant is there where there was once only a stitch, or a word, or a single note.
Perhaps it’ll be an hour or two on Wednesdays, or maybe Saturday mornings, or Thursdays at lunch. But do the thing that you want to do. Life can indeed be a work of art.
60-40:
It is indeed remarkable how time piles upon itself, and the things we do within that time can accrue to something good over the course of years or decades. My messy, unkempt garden sanctuary of sorts is a testament to that. I have lived in my house for over three decades now, and during that time I’ve learned about biodiversity, care of the environment, growing flowers and vegetables organically, and how to cultivate a sense of beauty with nature. Of course beauty is subjective, but my cottage-style gardens and wildflower lawns suit me and my family very well.
I didn’t set out to be a zealous gardener; it unfolded over the passage of time. The lesson remains the same: keep at the things that feed your soul. Over time, you may find you have a song, or a garden . . . and a wild messenger that snuggles into your flowers to remind you that all that effort was absolutely worthwhile.
60-40 